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My mentor Ev Albers said humor is the lubricant of ideas, especially hard ideas. In a sense I have been doing standup for several decades. In portraying such characters as Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Theodore Roosevelt, I have intuitively incorporated humor into my spontaneous monologues. In fact, I have made Jefferson (an essentially humorless man) much funnier than he ever was! The joke’s on the Third President of the United States.
On a Lewis and Clark cultural tour on the Missouri River in Montana a couple of years ago, the son of one of my closest friends said, on day three, “Wow, you really are a smartass.” I took that as a high compliment.
My life as a traveling humanities scholar has had its share of humorous moments, perhaps funnier in the rear view mirror than they were at the time: being arrested in costume, being mistaken for the astronaut Buzz Aldrin, riding down an elevator in a Theodore Roosevelt costume and having Kobe Bryant step on on the 18th floor, getting an ear piercing in a Claire’s shop in mall surrounded by a dozen pre-teens.
This album is a collection of humanities stories about my work as a historical impersonator—lessons learned, advice taken and rejected, embarrassing moments, travel woes, humiliating moments. Remember, comedy is tragedy plus time.
I call it an album, which led my irreverent daughter Catherine to say, “Oh, great Dad, what is this, William Shatner doing a Christmas album? What is it with you boomers?” If she were less snarky, I would say he made quite a good Christmas album, thank you very much, especially his Treked up evocation of “pa rum pa pum pum.”
This album is also a humorous memoir about growing up in a small cattle town on the Great Plains, spending summers with my grandparents on their dairy farm in Minnesota, my early work for a local newspaper, my relations with my mother, journeys through the American West and the North Dakota badlands. And more.
Ev Albers used to say that if he had not learned to laugh at the difficulties, the injustices, and the absurdity of life he would not have been able to go on. I believe with Mark Twain that laughter is our greatest weapon: “Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.”
I hope you will find these stories uplifting as well as funny. I’m a Jeffersonian. I believe we are all on a quest to become our best selves. I’m always delighted when I can be funny, but my mission in life is to provide valuable perspective, lucidity, historical context, and good sense in every room I find myself.
Thanks for listening.
Clay Jenkinson
This performance was held at the Roper Theater on Granby Street in Norfolk, Virginia, on February 25, 2020, and was recorded by Todd Washburn. It was a fundraiser for WHRO Public Radio.
Clay Jenkinson is available for evenings and humorous commentary throughout the United States. See jeffersonhour.com/contact for details.
Clay lives and works in Bismarck, North Dakota, the only state capitol named for a German strongman.
Thanks to Paul Lasikow, Kate Mielish, Beth Kaylor, Todd Washburn, David Polston, Russ and Liz Eagle, Bert Schmidt, Tom Burton, and Robbie and Joanne Bock.
Photography by David Polston.
Copyright Clay S. Jenkinson 2020. No segment of this album may be used or broadcast with the explicit consent of Major League Baseball… no wait, The Thomas Jefferson Hour.